19th July 2009 – “Four” go sailing

This weekend it was finally time for the very much longed for “tjejsegling” (girls sailing). The crew heading up to Fjällbacka north of Göteborg to board Matte and Lotta’s boat was Lina (who has never been on a boat before), Johanna (who has actually been on a boat before), Lotta (who at least owns a boat) and me (who do see a lot of boats from my apartment in Manly). We had made sure that all major incidents had been taken care of by the guys who rented the boat the week before (for example the rudder fell off and they had to be towed by the coast guard) so statistically our trip was to proceed extremely smoothly. And so it did.

Being four girls on a boat you do get a lot of attention when coming into a harbor, and our strategy was to be humbly disrespectful. (Or disrespectfully humble?) Lotta though blew it completely from the beginning by letting a guy show us how to make knots that we already knew how to make (pålstek – we know all about the rabbit and the princess and the dragon).


Part of the charm of being out sailing is that you are allowed (actually almost required) to look slightly dirty and disheveled (ah – finally I got to use this word that Tim has taught me. I do not think he has ever used it correctly when referring to himself, though…) and so we did when we ended up creating us a little After Sail party dressed in very non-breathing rain clothes and lifted the roof at a semi-dodgy pub in Grebbestad where two Irish guys (talented, I must say) played hilarious covers with us as self-appointed choir singers and front dancers. And it was actually appreciated, I would say. Probably not for our artistic interpretation, but we did spread a lot of joy.
At half past eleven we finally rushed back to the boat to get changed (“piffade”, in Swedish) and in the pouring rain we headed to a club to get that party going. And so we did… Saturday night turned out to be the best party night in ages and we all awoke the next morning with huge grins on our faces.

Sunday actually offered some five hours of quality sailing with good winds, a little bit of rain and a little bit of sunshine. (And yes, it turned out both me and Lotta can actually sail.) We ended up at Hunnebostrand, where we decided to have a quiet evening in the boat cooking and chatting. Monday morning me and Johanna had to head back to the city and so we left Lotta and Lina to their fate…